Transport

Transport is an ambiguous term, which is used in HL7 to identify the following:

1. The entire infrastructure that serves the HL7 messages transfer from the Sending Application Role to the Receiving Application Role. In other words: all transport activities supported by OSI layers 1-6. The OSI layers 1-6 are perceived by the HL7 Applications as the unified interface for message transfer, meaning that an HL7 Application is not required to (and usually doesn't) posses any specific knowledge for technology components residing at OSI layers 1-5. Note however that the usage of the term Transport in this context is strongly discouraged, since it's misleading and does not comply to OSI defintions of layers responsibilities. We strongly recommend the usage of term Messaging Infrastructure Layer for this purpose in all HL7 documents.
2. A specific Transport Protocol (OSI layer 1-4) that facilitates the routing, switching and transparent transfer of data between end systems, or hosts, and is responsible for end-to-end error recovery and flow control (for example TCP/IP, SMTP, RS232 or LU6.2).
   1. (Miroslav) Question - does this refers to the MLLP transport only? Do we have anywhere else in the standard use the word transport for 1-4 OSI layers in SOA environments (which would be a potential problem in interpretation of the term)?
   2. All the above states is that there are 2 known usages of the word "Transport". If SOA environments have a third one (which is different) then it should simply be added. The word "Transport" is too generic to assign 1 single meaning to it within HL7. Rene spronk 09:27, 10 Mar 2006 (CST)
      1. (Miroslav) Additional comment - we need to ensure that SOA SIG and other Messaging Infrastructure technologies use the word transport in the right manner as well.

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